looks interesting, i can see a few good plot hooks (trying to turn a large amount of treasure into something more portable by trading it in for gems, looking to set up a trade route to bring lumber and other repair supplies in, trying to track down pirates or recover stolen goods, even getting information about far away places; with pirates from distant spheres stopping by on a regular basis, it's probably a good place to try and find information about spheres that are off the beaten track since you might find people from other nearby spheres to talk to). i'm sure there are a few more as well. of course, it's a dangerous place to go if you're not on your guard, but that's why adventurers might go there while more sane people won't

the one thing that bugs me a little bit is that if all the asteroids have no air... how are the dwarves mining them? (that doesn't mean there isn't an answer, of course, it's just something that immediately jumped out to me... if the dwarves mine the asteroids, presumably they have a way to do it, but now i'm wondering what that method is )

on the proofreading front, the only thing i noticed was near the end: "The most prominent of the fences is..." followed by three names. that should probably be "The most prominent of the fences [are]..."

When I write worlds, I ask myself is this: "Why would PCs come here? What is there for them to do? What adventures can the get into, what dungeons can they explore?" That's my general starting point so that no world comes across as "gee, that's nice. Its a pretty world, but useless to my game. Its just window-dressing at best."

Some asteroids do have air; those are generally the ones mined. But mining void-asteroids is probably a problem in the greater SJ universe.

Update to Aember - the Palace of Quenched Flame. Had an idea for a ruined city where adventurers can visit and plunder. Drew a little inspiration from "At the Mountains of Madness" for this one (not a lot, mind you). Just wild idea I had this evening and ran with it

Update to Aember - the Palace of Quenched Flame. Had an idea for a ruined city where adventurers can visit and plunder. Drew a little inspiration from "At the Mountains of Madness" for this one (not a lot, mind you). Just wild idea I had this evening and ran with it

i like it, glad the accessibility of the sun isn't going to waste any more i definitely have to say, after his description i could definitely imagine people wanting to loot the place, and i could absolutely imagine some sage who comes up with an equation that claims to predict when a flare will lift the palace up high could be a good plot hook of sorts

and as per usual, proofreading!

first line: "The race known as Efreet are known to get around, laying to claim to..." (there's an extra 'to' between 'laying' and 'claim').

in the third paragraph: "Woe those poor souls" (there's something missing between 'Woe' and 'those'... could be 'betides' if you're trying to sound olde-timey )

same paragraph: "after an outburst from Aember had tossed into an unusually high orbit" ('had tossed [it] into...')

same paragraph: "As we broke the air envelop, which was" (envelop is a verb, meaning to surround. you want envelope here i presume )

same paragraph: "so I cannot say if it were the unfortunates who came before us..." (was, not were. unless the kraken talks like that, which i think kinda does fit if we were to pretend it was talk like a pirate day, so maybe this one is perfectly fine )

fourth paragraph: "The city is unwalled, and access is as simple as walking from pier to the city center" ('from [the] pier' i think).

same paragraph: "as any noise will draw the attention the predators" ('[of] the predators).

a bit of googling suggests that efreet is correctly the plural, but efreeti or efreeta is the singular (i thought it was the other way round, so i'm glad i googled first and posted corrections later ). in at least one case, you should be using the singular version, and possibly in others too, hard to say for sure

i like it, glad the accessibility of the sun isn't going to waste any more i definitely have to say, after his description i could definitely imagine people wanting to loot the place, and i could absolutely imagine some sage who comes up with an equation that claims to predict when a flare will lift the palace up high could be a good plot hook of sorts

Your suggestion did partially inspire it

and as per usual, proofreading!

Thanks! I'll go through these tonight when I get home Lots of minor stuff I missed while typing.

a bit of googling suggests that efreet is correctly the plural, but efreeti or efreeta is the singular (i thought it was the other way round, so i'm glad i googled first and posted corrections later ). in at least one case, you should be using the singular version, and possibly in others too, hard to say for sure

That always threw me for a loop, too. I'll double check the usage and make sure its right.

The big thing to me was keeping Efreet off of Aember, because "Efreet settlement on the sun" is kinda cliche (and I am terrible for that!). But the ruins of an Efreet settlement on the sun? Haunted by undead Efreet and all of their pet monsters now turned feral? Now that's interesting and fairly unique; I'm not sure how many adventure modules have been written with the ruins of an Efreet palace as the setting. I wanted the ruins big enough so that after many long centuries, the place is still filled with enough treasure to lure in adventurers and treasure-hunters (to their doom...muhahahahaha, er, yeah )

Originally I was just going to give it an elliptical orbit but then the idea of it being tossed in the air like a cinder tossed up by a geyser or volcano hit me and I went with that. Thus the place could go centuries without being touched!

I'm rather proud of the results, really (and how Winterspace overall is turning out).

i think the biggest reason there always seems to be an efreet settlement on the sun is that D&D has a much more limited number of things that can live in a literal fire area that also have a civilization. for something like marid, they don't show up every single time there's water because there's tons of D&D stuff that lives in water. same for dao and djinn; there's lots of creatures that fly, there's lots of creatures that live underground. there isn't a ton of variety for fire though (especially when we're not just talking places that have lots of fire, but rather places that *are* fire), and it's probably too late to try and create new iconic creatures that live in fiery places at this point.

so definitely it is interesting to see a twist on that; winterspace seems like just the sort of sphere that would make a home that efreet don't like after all

Big update today (2,600 words!) - just added one of Ryme's moons, Uialerin. It is an elf moon, and where the Admiral of the Sphere's HQ is located.

The gist of the place is of a moon at the edge of winter (late Nov/early Dec), covered in slow-growing evergreens. It was a remote private hunting estate for some mid-level elf merchants centuries ago, and hardly inhabited. When the elves dumped the orcs on Armistice, the Fleet rolled in and built a castle there (something of a cross between the Castellian's Castle in B2 and the Crown of Corelleon). A city sprang up around the castle. A tiny minority of non-elves live there as well.

As far as a theme, think blind arrogance, with a bit of decadence creeping in. Its certainly not at the levels of say Netheril or other dens of corruption, but the elves are arrogant enough to think that the likes of the Kraken would never dare visit the port, much less describe it in such detail and expose some dirty little secrets of theirs.

Yup. Aside fro efreet, there's azer, and...not much else. SJ added a few here and there but overall the list of critters you can use in suns is rather limited :p

Depending on the nature of the firebody, you could have firenewts, fire giants, hephaeston giants, sollux, azer, hellions, fire minions, fire gen, efreet, fire mephits, fire elementals (and pyrophor and helions), salamanders, magma mephits, magma paraelementals, magmen, smoke paraelementals, smoke mephits, radiance quasielementals, and radiance mephits. There's probably some others I'm forgetting as well. I think Planescape's Inner Planes supplement had been worked on a few years earlier, it would have helped make the firebodies of SJ much more varied.

And of course, nothing stops anyone from making new monsters and just saying "treat them as these creatures, but they are immune to fire."

Big update today (2,600 words!) - just added one of Ryme's moons, Uialerin. It is an elf moon, and where the Admiral of the Sphere's HQ is located.

The gist of the place is of a moon at the edge of winter (late Nov/early Dec), covered in slow-growing evergreens. It was a remote private hunting estate for some mid-level elf merchants centuries ago, and hardly inhabited. When the elves dumped the orcs on Armistice, the Fleet rolled in and built a castle there (something of a cross between the Castellian's Castle in B2 and the Crown of Corelleon). A city sprang up around the castle. A tiny minority of non-elves live there as well.

As far as a theme, think blind arrogance, with a bit of decadence creeping in. Its certainly not at the levels of say Netheril or other dens of corruption, but the elves are arrogant enough to think that the likes of the Kraken would never dare visit the port, much less describe it in such detail and expose some dirty little secrets of theirs.

Enjoy!

well, this area seems a little more boring, but then what should i expect? naturally the EIN is going to at least try to keep the more interesting stuff where it isn't visible at the very least, and it certainly wouldn't make sense for a relatively quiet port under perpetual military occupation to be a hotbed of smuggling and piracy

this is more of a place where the party stops when they are trying to have some nice quiet downtime rather than picking a fight i think (there's nothing wrong with that).

still, at least a few potential plot hooks... and a lot of NPCs waiting for names too, i'd say ^^

proofreading, as per usual: (sorry about the lack of notation where each thing is, but if you copy and paste the quoted stuff into your ctrl + f search bar it should get you close enough, and i should be sleeping already rather than marking where in the text each thing is)

"...and stockades to store goods for shipment to other spheres..." (a stockade is a wooden log enclosure... not exactly the most elven of structures you could use one for storage i suppose, provided you don't mind the lack of a roof, but it wouldn't seem terribly useful for a spelljamming culture, which you kinda need to be if you're going to have a hunting lodge on an isolated moon... )

"...there are opportunities abound for enterprising smugglers" (either just "opportunities abound" or something like "there are abundant opportunities")

"The glade is unearthly beautiful..." (i'm not sure if it's actually wrong, but it feels weird to me. perhaps "The glade possesses an unearthly beauty..."? in any event, right after that part it should be "... and [is] the one place..." )

"The lower level is a barn for animals..." (stable? barn would usually be associated with animals like cows, etc... not the sort of thing i would associate with wealthy hunters personally. horses, on the other hand...).

"About a quarter of the population is non-elven merchants" (are, not is, i think)

not a proofreading critique, but given that the only crew elves accept other than elves are hadozee, i would expect the population breakdown to include some hadozee at least.

"Elves routine patrol the streets..." (routinely)

"...in units of a dozen..." (this just feels weird, and i'm not sure why. part of me wants to make it "up to a dozen", and i have absolutely no idea why my brain thinks that is better... but maybe you just need to specify what the dozen is. soldiers, guards, troops, elves, warriors, watchmen, whatever).

"Some get together into wild hunts through the nearby forest." (i think this only works if you are trying to use wild hunt as a noun, which is actually a thing, but in that case, i think it would be *the* wild hunt, or rather, The Wild Hunt, since i think that's a proper noun, rather than a pluralized 'wild hunts". alternately, "Some get together in wild hunts..." could work if you didn't mean to refer to the *the* wild hunt ).

hmmm... i'm not completely sure whether "the Winterdocks is" or "the Winterdocks are" would be proper... but for pluralized proper nouns, i think i would go with are. it just feels better.

for the giffworks (and calmanar in general, now that i look at it), it might be a good idea to specify what kind of gnomes make up the population (or at least to specify whether they are tinker gnomes)

"...confound and confuse unwelcomed guests..." (i think this should just be unwelcome, not unwelcomed)

"Rumor has it that an elvish, a creature known as a baelnorn..." (because i know what a baelnorn is, i rather suspect you wanted to say "Rumor has it that an elvish lich, a creature...."

"those sailors who prove service beyond the call of duty..." (perhaps display, perform, or provide instead of prove?)

one thing i'll add, i feel it has a bit of a sense of excessive scale to it imo. a tavern with 6 private dining halls seems quite excessive to me, unless the typical fleet in a sphere is larger in your version of the setting than most for example; that might be enough to fit half of the officers in the typical canon sphere fleet i think, and i would be at least a tad surprised if the elves here are so lacking in discipline that it's worth investing in the chance of half the fleet being present (instead of out patrolling etc) and in need of private dining at any given time. likewise, an inn with 40 private rooms feels like an awful lot, unless almost everyone in a single ship is likely to head off to stay at the inn whenever they show up.

well, this area seems a little more boring, but then what should i expect? naturally the EIN is going to at least try to keep the more interesting stuff where it isn't visible at the very least, and it certainly wouldn't make sense for a relatively quiet port under perpetual military occupation to be a hotbed of smuggling and piracy

Ayup. Although there's a bit more smuggling going on than the elves suspect Not a place for amateur smugglers, but for the experienced smuggler, there's some coin to be had here.

this is more of a place where the party stops when they are trying to have some nice quiet downtime rather than picking a fight i think (there's nothing wrong with that).

Very true. I didn't want that to be the whole purpose, thus the seedy underbelly that the EIN tries to hide.

still, at least a few potential plot hooks... and a lot of NPCs waiting for names too, i'd say ^^

Sigh...yeah, there be a list alright. Last update generated a fair list of NPCs to detail. I'll need to update the list with NPCs here, too. Going to end up with a Rogue's Gallery as a whole separate book at this pace!

proofreading, as per usual: (sorry about the lack of notation where each thing is, but if you copy and paste the quoted stuff into your ctrl + f search bar it should get you close enough, and i should be sleeping already rather than marking where in the text each thing is)

Not a problem. I'll go through these tonight when I get home. Thanks for the feedback, it always helps

one thing i'll add, i feel it has a bit of a sense of excessive scale to it imo. a tavern with 6 private dining halls seems quite excessive to me, unless the typical fleet in a sphere is larger in your version of the setting than most for example; that might be enough to fit half of the officers in the typical canon sphere fleet i think, and i would be at least a tad surprised if the elves here are so lacking in discipline that it's worth investing in the chance of half the fleet being present (instead of out patrolling etc) and in need of private dining at any given time. likewise, an inn with 40 private rooms feels like an awful lot, unless almost everyone in a single ship is likely to head off to stay at the inn whenever they show up.

Well, I sorta view the Elvish blockade of Armistice as being fairly significant, not merely a Man-O-War as in Practical Planetology. We know the elves lost a MoW, an Armada, and most of the crew of a battle dolphin in Radiant Dragon, and I figure that's not even a sizable portion of the fleet. I'm thinking a figure somewhere in the two dozen range, a mix of a couple of Armadas, some MoW, and Monarch Tradesmen picket ships.

I also figure there is some amount of "crew rotation" going on. Sailors might serve a tour of duty for a few months, come ashore for a few week while other sailors take their place for their shore-leave time. That sort of thing. The whole "Ship as your home" thing seems more a sci-fi trope than normal for ship travel.

That said, I could also add more inns, too I sorta see inns and taverns as the primary economy of the city, so more is good.

proofreading, as per usual: (sorry about the lack of notation where each thing is, but if you copy and paste the quoted stuff into your ctrl + f search bar it should get you close enough, and i should be sleeping already rather than marking where in the text each thing is)

Going through these now

"...and stockades to store goods for shipment to other spheres..." (a stockade is a wooden log enclosure... not exactly the most elven of structures you could use one for storage i suppose, provided you don't mind the lack of a roof, but it wouldn't seem terribly useful for a spelljamming culture, which you kinda need to be if you're going to have a hunting lodge on an isolated moon... )

Basically just some warehouses to dump goods until they can be picked up later. I've cleaned it up.

Couple of places I had trouble with the wording myself; your fixes did the trick

not a proofreading critique, but given that the only crew elves accept other than elves are hadozee, i would expect the population breakdown to include some hadozee at least.

Noted, and it dawned on me that hadozee are tropical critters, so they're not going to be too comfortable in a cold climate Put some in, but made a joke about them being bundled up.

"Some get together into wild hunts through the nearby forest." (i think this only works if you are trying to use wild hunt as a noun, which is actually a thing, but in that case, i think it would be *the* wild hunt, or rather, The Wild Hunt, since i think that's a proper noun, rather than a pluralized 'wild hunts". alternately, "Some get together in wild hunts..." could work if you didn't mean to refer to the *the* wild hunt ).

"Wild" as in carefree. Not quite a group on ATVs rolling through the forest with guys saying "hold my beer", but along those lines. More than a few come back with bruises and wounded prides. Although now I have visions of an elf saying "hold my goblet" before rolling their reindeer mount into a ditch.

for the giffworks (and calmanar in general, now that i look at it), it might be a good idea to specify what kind of gnomes make up the population (or at least to specify whether they are tinker gnomes)

Kinda implied tinker, but point noted.

"Rumor has it that an elvish, a creature known as a baelnorn..." (because i know what a baelnorn is, i rather suspect you wanted to say "Rumor has it that an elvish lich, a creature...."

Yeah, just missed a word there.

"those sailors who prove service beyond the call of duty..." (perhaps display, perform, or provide instead of prove?)

Yeah, another place where I was tripping over what I was trying to say.

Another big update, another moon of Ryme. The moon Undiin is not quite finished (the cities are just placeholders right now) but I wanted to post this anyways. I'm kinda digging Winterspace as a place for adventure now

The basic idea of Undiin is fantasy Europa. The surface is one giant, smooth glacier. Under the glacier is an ocean full of aquatic races constantly feuding with one another. Scattered across the surface are city-sized igloos where ships can stop and trade. In addition to four small city-states is the ruined elf fortress of Brokendomes (with inspiration taken from At the Mountains of Madness), a wizard's domicile, and Deadrat Point, a notorious prison.

Enjoy! I hope to have another update this weekend to flesh out the four city states.

Heh, i think i've got most of my observations and thoughts below already actually. feel free to ignore them, change them, or otherwise use them as you see fit

proofreading (better late than never i suppose sorry it took me a few days to get around to it)

Undiin:

2nd paragraph, end of 1st sentence, there is a space before the period that shouldn't be there

you note in that paragraph that the breathable portion of the atmosphere is only 25 feet deep. are you implying that there is non-breathable atmosphere (fouled or even deadly air, for example) above that? or did you just mean that the entire atmosphere is that deep? if the atmosphere is deep but the bottom is the only breathable part, how does that impact the weather? alternately, if the entire atmosphere is only 25 feet deep, how does that impact the weather? and landing, for that matter; i can't recall offhand what size 2100 mile diameter qualifies for, but normally there are rules for descending through a planet's atmosphere which i can't imagine would apply so strongly to an atmosphere 25 feet deep. likewise, i'm curious how this interacts with gravity; is it like a ship's air envelope where the edge of the envelope is the edge of gravity, meaning that if you can somehow jump 26 feet up you're in wildspace? (also making this planet quite ideal for nonmagical engines, because you could build a 30 foot tower and be out of the gravity field and thus launch from the planet). if the gravity field is much deeper than the atmosphere, does gravity start stealing your air envelope as soon as you get into gravity range, and how does that impact landing and taking off as well? if the gravity field is much larger, what would happen if someone was to try to fill the whole thing with air somehow or another? there are a lot of questions this brings up, and while i think it is entirely reasonable that the kraken doesn't know the answers (and indeed, perhaps nobody knows most of the answers), he should probably know some of them, and depending on those answers, i feel like they would probably get mentioned in a guide about this moon

3rd paragraph: "and often the fog is visibility is reduced to zero." (at a guess: "and often [in] the fog is visibility is reduced to zero."

"...biting cold will sap strength from ye bones..." ('your' or perhaps 'yer' make sense, but not ye. if you're going for that old timey english feel, thy or thine is your, ye is you).

4th paragraph: possible amusing anecdote could have someone trying to trade the aquatic cultures weapons or armour that are highly impractical for underwater use; something like a shipment of axes, or chain mail (weak against piercing weapons which are the only kind that work underwater, and of course iron or steel wouldn't be ideal for anything that needs to be brought in and out of water as would be the case for various underwater races that live in both water and air areas) or even bows (but not crossbows; there *are* underwater adapted crossbows in 2nd edition, and this could certainly be a place that would justify producing them for trade, if the price is right. they're in the underwater combat subheading of combat in the DMG). it might also be interesting to hear about what they export; a great many of the things that i could see being interesting and worthy of export to merchants (special armour or weapons made from various underwater creatures, for example) seem like the sort of thing they wouldn't want to export (they're importing weapons and armour), so perhaps they have something as simple as ice that takes several times longer to melt, which needs to be mined from the underside of the glacier as it is made by the crushing weight of all the ice above. this would also provide a reason to fight over, and a reason why the undesirable elements are in the deep trenches; access to the glacier (especially near one of the few cities) provides wealth. even better if it requires tools made of metal (which will wear out quickly due to rusting and need replacing) and takes time to reform. perhaps some interesting musical instruments popular with lizardmen (who frequently have flooded rooms in their ships where they could play underwater music instruments - even better if you have lizardfolk believe it promotes growth or something, similar to how some people believe playing music for babies still in a pregnant mother's womb today increases intelligence, since we know producing superior offspring is a major part of the spacefaring lizardfolk's motivations) and such

5th paragraph, last sentence: the comma after hatred has an extra space that shouldn't be there.

i'm getting a bit of a sengoku jidai vibe from the merman emperor who has only theoretical authority here. might be an interesting thing to draw inspiration from

snowblind domes, 1st paragraph: "...least the dome they are staying at..." (should be 'lest', not 'least')

brokendomes: "As they used flitters to enter the domes, entry to Brokendomes can be tricky as the tunnel leading to it..." (just personal preference, but i'd try changing either the first or second 'as' to something else )

deadrat point: "I think she wanted me time to stew" (i suspect you at some point had or intended to have 'to give' in between 'wanted' and 'me' )

3rd paragraph: seems odd they'd maintain an area large enough for dragonflies or wasps to land if even flitters struggle to get in through the tunnels. i would expect only very small ships, likely with minimal rigging, to be able to access the landing area; perhaps a wreckboat (which has the added advantage of exceptional maneuverability), but that depends on how much space you think the flitter's wing/sails take up. neither wasp nor dragonfly really fit the very small or minimal rigging requirements to my mind, however. of course, that would to me imply that the prison has a powered wreckboat of some sort in their possession, to pick up prisoners from orbit and take them down to the prison, because i can't imagine a typical kingdom will have one handy just for the purpose of exiling undesirable people

4th paragraph: "...I had a bit of phenomena that took weeks to shake" (so far as i can tell, phenomena is not used to refer to any sort of illness, so i'm not sure if this is just usage i'm not familiar with, or if you wanted a different word here... )

6th paragraph: "Should a guess take their leave of Deadrat..." (guest, not guess).

xarius' retreat, 1st paragraph: "Near Undiin’s equator is this small dome is the retreat for the archmage Xarius" (at a guess, you probably wanted: "Near Undiin’s equator is this small dome [which] is the [a] retreat for the archmage Xarius"

1st paragraph: "The dome is large enough to hold two wasps or dragonflies, taking up a third of the dome" (this feels a bit clumsy. i would suggest instead, "The dome is large enough [that one third of it can] to hold two wasps or dragonflies, taking up a third of the dome" or something to that effect).

1st paragraph: "not available on Undiin, so thus requires..." (i think 'and thus requires' is what you want here).

Heh, i think i've got most of my observations and thoughts below already actually. feel free to ignore them, change them, or otherwise use them as you see fit

Your editing is always welcomed

proofreading (better late than never i suppose sorry it took me a few days to get around to it)

<gasp!>You're fired! No problem, been busy myself. Had hoped to have Undiin done last weekend, but work sorta squashed my creativity.

2nd paragraph, end of 1st sentence, there is a space before the period that shouldn't be there

Actually, that's a footnote that copy/paste didn't pick up! Interesting. Whenever you see that, I think that's the footnotes.

you note in that paragraph that the breathable portion of the atmosphere is only 25 feet deep. are you implying that there is non-breathable atmosphere (fouled or even deadly air, for example) above that? or did you just mean that the entire atmosphere is that deep? if the atmosphere is deep but the bottom is the only breathable part, how does that impact the weather? alternately, if the entire atmosphere is only 25 feet deep, how does that impact the weather?

The entire atmosphere is 25' thick. In effect, I originally envisioned Undiin as a voidworld. I'm not particularly fond of voidworlds, though, so I gave it a really thin atmosphere. I kinda like the imagery of being able to breathe, but reaching up and touching the void. At first it was a mere 10' thick, but I made it just a little thicker. Just don't go around hoping with your books of jumping!

Kraken would never know this, but Undiin was indeed a void at one point. The domes were created by the ogres of the Radiant Empire, with magic to continually create air. Over the many long centuries, leakage out of the domes has given Undiin an atmosphere.

and landing, for that matter; i can't recall offhand what size 2100 mile diameter qualifies for, but normally there are rules for descending through a planet's atmosphere which i can't imagine would apply so strongly to an atmosphere 25 feet deep.

Sounds like a footnote is in order. Hmmm.

likewise, i'm curious how this interacts with gravity; is it like a ship's air envelope where the edge of the envelope is the edge of gravity, meaning that if you can somehow jump 26 feet up you're in wildspace? (also making this planet quite ideal for nonmagical engines, because you could build a 30 foot tower and be out of the gravity field and thus launch from the planet). if the gravity field is much deeper than the atmosphere, does gravity start stealing your air envelope as soon as you get into gravity range, and how does that impact landing and taking off as well? if the gravity field is much larger, what would happen if someone was to try to fill the whole thing with air somehow or another? there are a lot of questions this brings up, and while i think it is entirely reasonable that the kraken doesn't know the answers (and indeed, perhaps nobody knows most of the answers), he should probably know some of them, and depending on those answers, i feel like they would probably get mentioned in a guide about this moon

Sounds like a couple of footnotes are in order!

4th paragraph: possible amusing anecdote could have someone trying to trade the aquatic cultures weapons or armour that are highly impractical for underwater use; something like a shipment of axes, or chain mail (weak against piercing weapons which are the only kind that work underwater, and of course iron or steel wouldn't be ideal for anything that needs to be brought in and out of water as would be the case for various underwater races that live in both water and air areas) or even bows (but not crossbows; there *are* underwater adapted crossbows in 2nd edition, and this could certainly be a place that would justify producing them for trade, if the price is right. they're in the underwater combat subheading of combat in the DMG). it might also be interesting to hear about what they export; a great many of the things that i could see being interesting and worthy of export to merchants (special armour or weapons made from various underwater creatures, for example) seem like the sort of thing they wouldn't want to export (they're importing weapons and armour), so perhaps they have something as simple as ice that takes several times longer to melt, which needs to be mined from the underside of the glacier as it is made by the crushing weight of all the ice above. this would also provide a reason to fight over, and a reason why the undesirable elements are in the deep trenches; access to the glacier (especially near one of the few cities) provides wealth. even better if it requires tools made of metal (which will wear out quickly due to rusting and need replacing) and takes time to reform. perhaps some interesting musical instruments popular with lizardmen (who frequently have flooded rooms in their ships where they could play underwater music instruments - even better if you have lizardfolk believe it promotes growth or something, similar to how some people believe playing music for babies still in a pregnant mother's womb today increases intelligence, since we know producing superior offspring is a major part of the spacefaring lizardfolk's motivations) and such

Good ideas

i'm getting a bit of a sengoku jidai vibe from the merman emperor who has only theoretical authority here. might be an interesting thing to draw inspiration from

Heh, I was thinking "Holy Roman Empire", but that works too. Kraken didn't spend much time down there, so it won't be detailed too heavily. Thus DMs can put whatever they want down there

3rd paragraph: seems odd they'd maintain an area large enough for dragonflies or wasps to land if even flitters struggle to get in through the tunnels. i would expect only very small ships, likely with minimal rigging, to be able to access the landing area; perhaps a wreckboat (which has the added advantage of exceptional maneuverability), but that depends on how much space you think the flitter's wing/sails take up. neither wasp nor dragonfly really fit the very small or minimal rigging requirements to my mind, however. of course, that would to me imply that the prison has a powered wreckboat of some sort in their possession, to pick up prisoners from orbit and take them down to the prison, because i can't imagine a typical kingdom will have one handy just for the purpose of exiling undesirable people

Hmmm, good point. Not many ships in the 5-10 ton range, what I envisioned to move prisoners around. Wreckboats is fine

4th paragraph: "...I had a bit of phenomena that took weeks to shake" (so far as i can tell, phenomena is not used to refer to any sort of illness, so i'm not sure if this is just usage i'm not familiar with, or if you wanted a different word here... )

OK, added the city of Icecap, and updates to Snowblind Domes. The concept of Icecap is that is an over-glorified stock-yard for a cabal of merchants. They don't particularly like visitors snooping around their compound. And they follow a policy of "company stores" to keep their workers in ever-increasing spiral of debt. Not the nicest folk around.

a nice addition. gotta say, those storage vaults seem rather excessively well defended for just regular goods... which sounds like just the sort of thing to pique the interest of adventurers, pirates, and thieves. it's funny how something so simple can be used as an adventure hook if you feel so inclined

anyways, as far as proofreading, looks like you were fully alert when you wrote up icecap. all i've got is an instance of undiir that should be undiin in the second paragraph